In the Midst of Life

as perky as ever, sitting up in bed knitting or sewing, doing the
Times
crossword puzzle, watching
Countdown, Mastermind
and
University Challenge
on TV, getting most of the answers right, and beating me at Scrabble.
    At some point during the summer months she developed an infection of the lungs. ‘It’s an MRSA bug,’ I thought, ‘this will be the end.’ But it was not the dreaded MRSA. It was a treatable infection, and another course of antibiotics drove it away. Leah was back on form – on form for her visitors, that is. None of us knew what she really endured as the weeks dragged on into months.
    Along-stay geriatric hospital is not a place where any of us would like to end up. Leah was in a smallish ward of fifteen beds that were not too close to each other, but close enough for there to be no privacy. Most of her neighbours were confused in one way or another. Yet Leah never complained, not to me, at any rate. She did not become morose, in-turned or whiny – least of all did she succumb to self-pity. Her thoughts were always focused on those around her. ‘Look at that poor old soul over there. She cries all the time, poor soul.’ Or, ‘That woman over there came in last night. Her son came with her, a man of about fifty. He stayed all night, but he went after breakfast, had to go to work. It was good of him to stay for so long, don’t you think?’
    The ward was chronically understaffed, and the nurses and care assistants were under great pressure, but they were cheerful and tried to maintain a happy atmosphere. Leah liked them, and knew all about their boyfriends, their children and their holidays. She was obviously popular. The worst thing for her was the boredom – ‘There’s nothing to do. The day is punctuated only by meal times, nothing else.’ Leah continued with her crosswords and books and knitting, which she adored, and I often took her a new commission to be knitted for someone else. Another friend, Suzy, had seen the same need, and also presented her with things to be knitted, until Leah had to draw a line – ‘Nothing more till after Christmas. I can’t cope.’
    Leah’s reading would have been impressive for a woman half her age, but for someone of one hundred and two it was formidable. Moreover, she read without the use of spectacles. I saw her reading in hospital a history of Afghanistan in the twentieth century, upon which she commented knowledgeably; a biography of Charlotte Bronte, with a second for comparison; she read novels, biography, social history, poetry and occasionally a newspaper, but never a magazine. ‘I can’t waste my time on those things,’ she said.
    She made the best of things with heroic goodwill, but it was not easy. ‘Nights are the worst,’ she said to me once. ‘I hardly sleep. Nights are very long.’
    I am sure they were. To be awake, uncomfortable, and scarcelyable to move for hours on end must have been a torment. I asked her about getting a nurse to shift her position.
    ‘There aren’t any nurses overnight,’ she said. ‘Well, not what I would call a nurse. There are all these different women who come from an agency. You never see the same one twice, and they are so slow. I don’t know what they are supposed to do. They amble around, or sit chatting, but you can’t ask them to do anything, because they won’t.’
    I thought of my own months of night duty as a student nurse, when we were constantly on the move in a ward of thirty beds.
    ‘But what about the night sister?’ I said. ‘You could ask her to get the nurses to move you.’
    ‘I haven’t seen a night sister since I’ve been here,’ she said simply.
    The ward was hot and claustrophobic, but the summer wore itself away and autumn brought with it cooler weather, which was a relief. Many times X-rays had been taken, but, to Leah’s disappointment, each time they showed that the leg had not healed and the huge plaster could not be removed. She would have to stick it out.
    In November, after five months of discomfort and immobility, it was finally taken off and a knee-to-ankle plaster was fitted. She was overjoyed, and when the nurses brought her a Zimmer frame, she practised walking with the zeal of a young athlete training for the Olympics. Finally, she went to a rehabilitation centre where, to her delight, she had a room of her own. There was a high staff/patient ratio there, and she had a lot of physiotherapy. At last, the short plaster was removed, and life skills were